A handful of carefully-selected Model S owners will be invited to swap their car’s battery pack at a custom-built facility located across the street from the Supercharger station in Harris Ranch, a small town situated roughly halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. The pilot program will test Tesla’s battery-swapping technology in real-life situations and evaluate the demand for such a service from current and prospective owners.
Initially performed by appointment only, the battery swapping process will be entirely automated and cost slightly less than a full tank of a gas for a Model S-sized premium sedan. Swapping a battery pack will take approximately three minutes because Tesla recently had to add titanium and hardened aluminum ballistic plates to protect the pack from damage caused by roadside debris.
Tesla believes it can lower the time it takes to change a battery pack to less than a minute by using further automation and making packaging modifications to the Model S. However, it is not putting any more money into the process until it has gauged demand.
The results from the pilot program will be used to help Tesla decide whether or not to launch a full-scale battery swap operation. The automaker has not announced how long the program will last.
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